


when the rain washes you clean

by bookstvnerdlove



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Davy Jones - Freeform, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 23:32:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3187349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookstvnerdlove/pseuds/bookstvnerdlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>thunder only happens when it's raining/players only love you when they're playing/women, they will come and they will go/when the rain washes you clean you'll know</p><p>(or, a life story of Killian Jones, Pirate)</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the rain washes you clean

**Author's Note:**

> for a tumblr friend who, many months ago, sent a prompt for fic based on the following lyrics from “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac. 
> 
> (it’s off their album, Rumors, and for real, the song and album are well worth a listen)
> 
> Immediately my mind went to the life and times of Captain Jones, pirate, and soon, it spun out of control. So, if you don’t mind almost 6k words of Killian Jones feels, my own made up folk tales, and canon divergence (with a hint of Davy Jones and of captain swan at the end), this is for you.

1.

His name is Killian Jones and he is five years old the first time he realizes that his mother isn’t like the other mothers in his village. 

She tells him stories of gods and goddesses, after tucking him into bed, the scratchy wool threadbare but held together with loving stitches. Killian listens to her stories, attention rapt at the daring acts of the brave men and women of whom she speaks, never noticing that her eyes tell another tale, one of sadness and loss. A tale that somehow Killian knows as truth in a flash of understanding one night as his eyelids flutter closed and his body relaxes into the mattress. He becomes more aware, over time, that she is present in these stories that she tells, well-disguised, but present and he begins to wonder just who she is and how she came to be his mother.

She sings, some mornings, as she tends to the small garden in the plot of land where their cottage is – on the bluffs overlooking the ocean, where she’s always watching for his father’s ship to come in.

Sometimes she is a whirling tornado of mood, when the sky is cloudy and storms rage on the water, she dances around the house until things are calm again. Her arms arc over her head and her skirts spin through the air as she circles and circles. Sometimes she takes his hands and he spins with her until he’s dizzy. He falls back on the floor and he looks up at her, her long dark hair flowing as it falls out of her braids.

“How come you never get the spins, mama?” He asks, but she never answers, even as the room continues to spin for him and he has to close his eyes to relieve the pressure that builds just from watching her from his perch on the arm of his papa’s chair. She smiles and flexes her hands, and continues to dance across their rooms until the sun (or moon) peeks out of the clouds.

.

(She never worries about his father coming home.

This is what she tells him at night when he frets, soothing his worries, pressing his hair back and placing soft kisses on his forehead. She sings softly, humming words in another language, but somehow he understands them anyway.)

.

(She never talks about Liam, Liam who left home and, instead of following his father to sea; he followed their King instead.)

.

It happens one night when his father comes home, that moment when he realizes his mother possesses magic. After, he watches the ship come to port from the cliffs with his her by his side. His small hand clasped in her warm hand, his fingers sticky with the honey that he had been helping her harvest, watching as the amber liquid slowly dripped into their jars.

Before, while they were holding the honeycomb, her back straightened as though a puppet on string and she rushed to the window. She opened the shudders and shouted for Killian to come – _come quickly!_ – and they made their way outside. Sure enough, once they were standing at the edge, staring out into the blue water, he saw it on the horizon, right where her fingertip pointed with her whispered song, _“Papa’s home, darling.”_ At first it was a small dark shape and then he was able to make out the sails, bright and white, flying the flag of their kingdom.

. 

His father is large man with a wide-brimmed hat and a booming voice. His father tells him, “It’s in my blood, little one,” one day in the garden as Killian asks him why he loves the sea so much.

Killian is gathering flowers for _mama_ , under the direction of _papa_. He pauses in his task, hand clasped around the purple-blue of the lavender that grow wildly in the land around their house. He doesn’t understand what this means, it’s in his blood. Blood – he knows well from his scrapes and cuts gained outdoors – is red and dark, not light and blue-grey like the ocean. He blinks at his papa and it treated with his booming laughter and, “One day you’ll understand m’boy.”

.

(On the day that he does understand, following Liam around his ship as his brother carefully explains what _port_ and _starboard_ are, and how to tie the special knots, he feels a surge within him – _this_ is it, _this_ is where he is meant to me.

And he whispers into the ocean, “I understand, papa.”)

.

His mother dies on a sunny spring day a few years later, quietly in her bed, slipping away with a smile on her face. He cries over her body for hours, until his brother arrives and straightens out his clothes, tying his cravat into a simple knot, before they bury her in the garden behind their house, on the cliff overlooking the sea.

“You’re coming with me,” Liam bites out, gruffly. “Do you understand, Killian?”

He nods, even though he knows that Liam lives on a ship and has a title and _everything._ How will Lieutenant Jones keep a small boy? Even he knows that captains don’t allow family on their ships.

Liam releases him to find their father and he hears their angry voices through the window – the same one he used to wait with mama, watching for papa’s ship to come in. He hears snippets of words and phrases and mostly his name.

_Killian can’t –_

_Killian shouldn’t –_

_No, father –_

And

_I won’t allow it –_

He wants to run away, but instead he talks with mama, because he can still see a faint outline of her in the garden. She doesn’t speak but she’s there, watching over her boys.

.

He doesn’t leave with Liam, his father secreting them away and boarding a ship under the cover of night. In the morning, his father is gone – leaving only one small token, a necklace with a pendant and within the pendant an etching of a sea creature with eight tentacles and a separate pendant etched with a woman, half-human, half-fish. He keeps it, sewn into the hem of his shirt, the only tether to his history, the only thing he has that prove that once his parents existed. That once, he had a family.

The captain threatens to toss him overboard unless he joins the crew until they reach port. He learns how to swab a deck and stay quick on his feet and hide in dark corners of the ship.

He asks his papa – _why?_ – as he stares into the water on that first voyage.

.

(He never receives an answer and one day he stops asking.)

 

2.

His name is _hey there_ and _you, boy_ and he is fourteen years old when his brother finds him sleeping in the alley behind the old inn where the innkeeper allows him scraps from the table in exchange for labor. His hands are calloused and rough from months spent mucking stalls, but at least he’s fed and if it rains, the innkeeper allows him to sleep in the stables.

His brother finds him one evening before a wild storm breaks, the clouds looming and swirling in the air. Having been too many years since Killian has seen him, he struggles at the beginning, until he hears his brother’s voice, the temperate soothing tone that he remembers from childhood. The even keeled Liam Jones in the house full of extremes, voice soothing in his ear, as his limbs release the struggle and he sighs, limp, into his brother’s arms.

.

He takes to the structure and the order of the navy with ease. He’s learned how to take orders with no hope of forward movement, so taking orders (from his brother) with the expectation that one day, he too will give orders, merely provides him incentive to work harder. If the wool of his uniform is new and scratches his skin he cares not as he dines in the Captain’s Quarters for an evening meal. Every day.  If the hat he is forced to wear is tight on his head and shaped oddly, he chooses not to notice.

(Food has too often been a luxury in his life and he finds that he will do anything to secure a proper meal.)

.

The first time it happens, he’s been on board for three years. He is seventeen and his hair has grown long, tied into a tail, kept with the official ribbon of the naval fleet. He looks like any young officer-in-training, standing at the helm of his captain’s ship, spyglass expanded as he monitors the horizon.

Suddenly, a breeze passes through the air and with it he’s brought immediately back to home – to the cottage on the cliff, his hand in his mother’s as they watch for papa (or on rare occasions Liam) to arrive, the scent of wild lavender in the air. He knows that he lives in a realm of magical enchantments. He’s learned, over the years, that there are mystical forces behind much of the royal movements and the dangers that threaten at the edge of the kingdom. So he’s unsurprised when the feeling punches through his gut – the sensation of being at _home_ , of being _loved_ , unconditionally.

(It lasts mere moments, but he swears that he can see her face within the waves on the horizon. Smiling at him, thankful that he’s found his way.)

.

Liam refuses to speak of her, of _him_ , and of that house by the sea. Killian learns not to ask – because this is Liam, and he wants Liam to be proud of him. But he always wonders what he remembers of life before Killian arrived. Were they the same? Did he remember the way that she sometimes seemed like _magic_? Did he remember papa, before abandonment, before he was always away, or was he always leaving them?

Liam only ever answers one time, ripped on rum that he confiscated from the crew. Killian knocked on his door, ready for their regular meal, to find his upstanding brother stumbling around the cabin, his perfectly tailored uniform askew and his eyes bright and wild.

(Liam smelled the lavender on the night of the storm, the night that he found Killian, shared through disjointed words and slurred words. He smelled it in the air, as if it were _her_ in the rain, leading the way. And he made a vow, to always protect his little brother, the one whom he failed for seven long years.

The rulers of their kingdom may pay honor and pledge fealty to the sea gods and goddesses, but Liam Jones, Captain, rule follower, man of honor – he pledges only to his family.)

.

And so it goes for years, until he is Lieutenant Jones and until the war that had been threatening for years, strikes.

He begins to hear whispers of discontent among the crew, which only makes him twist the noose of regulation tighter. The crew, at each other’s throats, and in desperate need of shore leave, takes an unsanctioned leave, as they are moored one evening, Liam at the Admiralty collecting new orders. When they arrive the next morning, the noise from the dinghy bumping the ship rousing Killian, he reads them a riot act. It’s not until the First Mate pulls him aside that he learns what the other men did the previous night. At the tavern, the men were held captive by the attentions of a troupe of traveling actors who spun a tale of treachery so deep that Killian refuses to believe it.

.

_They told the tale of a king, so ruthless in his desire for power and magic, who razed an entire enchanted forest to build a fleet of ships so magically imbued that they outpaced any other ship, in any other fleet, and were virtually unsinkable._

_Now,_ the troupe had continued _, the creatures and other inhabitants of the forest (all magical) took umbrage at the slight, at the temerity of this king, and began to wage war upon his kingdom. Upon hearing of this brewing, two descendants of the gods of the ocean, who had released their immortality back to the gods from which they had received the gifts and taken solace in a mortal life, were summoned back to their families._

_One of them returned to their duty. The other remained and paid with their life._

_There were whispers, the troupe exclaimed, of mortal children of the two demi-deities. Two mortal children who were not to be killed, who, as long as they sailed the kingdom’s seas, would be spared._

_._

(Killian may believe in magic, but he does not believe in fairytales.

He dismisses the mate and scolds the crew, and when his brother returns and they embark on their magical journey, he allows himself to forget this story and the familiarity he feels in his gut.)

.

(And when they return, and Liam is dead, he could swear that he sees the ocean boils as his fingers run along the worn leather and the cold metal of the insignia that bears the mark of his corrupt monarch, and he vows that he will see the ocean red with the blood of his enemies.)

 

3.

His name is Captain Jones and he is twenty-five years old. He’s a fearsome pirate who flies the crimson flag and has learned to send his sword through skin without feeling waves of nausea and fears of his brother’s disappointment. He’s learned how to dangle trinkets in front of the ladies for hire in taverns and ply them with tales of adventure. He’s learned how to close his eyes at their touch and let them guide him towards release.

(He’s learned to drown out the voices – his mother’s singing, his brother’s calm direction, his father’s booming arrogance – all lost to him for so long. He’s been alone so long that he’s learned how to pretend that he always meant for it to be this way.)

He’s become Captain Jones, a different Captain Jones that he thought he would be, but he convinces the crew that he is this man, this cruel man, this bloodthirsty man, this jovial man. And sometimes he feels like he has become that man, the one that shares a pint with his crew that gathers crowds around his table while he tells tale of adventure. That this man, this Captain Jones is who he was always meant to be.

.

He has learned that some souls have more value in the world than others (according to those who make the rules) and that he has no respect for this. He picks fights in taverns and he spits in the face of humanity, while his leaks out of his soul day by day, with each act of piracy he commits, he blackens himself, marks himself, damns his own soul.

He keeps his crew in gold and rum and women, and they never leave him. He loses years like this, to vice and violence and wealth. And he finds that he can cover his shame until it fades, and he learns that he can convince the world he is shameless and charming and cruel.

He flaunts his strength and he takes so many chances, always managing to be on the other end of a deathblow or escaping catastrophe. He begins to think that he was born under a lucky star – or a cursed star – and he tempts fate as frequently as he drinks.

(And yet still, he survives.)

 

4. 

Her name is Milah and she’s older than him by several years but all he can see is the misery in her eyes when she speaks of her husband and the fear in her eyes when she speaks of her son. So he pours her a bit of rum from his bottle and he tells her a tale from his early days as a pirate, of an island he came across that had the sweetest fruits he’d ever tasted. His crew left quickly, as they were on a mission for some treasure left buried off the coast somewhere, but not before they gathered as many reserves of the fruit as possible.

He watched as she licked her lips and her eyes began to shine, as she asked him to describe how the fruit tasted. “What kind of sweet was it?” She asked.

He presses a thumb against her lips and leans in for kiss. He wants to tell her that it was the kind of sweet that matches the taste of a woman, but knows when to push and when to not. He’s read her and knows that she wants him to kiss her, but has not yet decided upon the rest. Her lips part and she leans back, but at the last minute pulls away with downcast eyes.

“I have a husband,” she whispers.

His mind sharpens, despite the rum and dice as he eyes the crowd at the tavern. He has a knife in his boot and one in the inner pocket of he coat, and he knows he can take on most men, if needed, but he bristles at the thought of marring a most pleasant encounter with violence.

“He’s not here,” she hastily clarifies and his body relaxes again as she meets his eyes once again.

“Sometimes I wish that I could just run away,” she confesses as his hand resumes an exploration of her body, twirling a dark curl around his index finger, rubbing it with his thumb. His hips have found their way close to hers and he can feel the heat radiating off her, seeping into his skin.

The words escape him before he plans it, “I could take you away, darling.”

Her eyes are sharp as they recognize the thickness of his voice, the intimate closeness; his breath meeting hers in short puffs of air. He doesn’t know if it’s her or her _need_ that he’s responding to – and frankly he’s past caring. She’s pretty and unhappy, and he’s alone and merely a pretender.

They’d make a glorious, tragic pair.

.

(So, in the bright light of day, she joins him in the harbor and his crew makes a show of forcing her onboard, and when he finds himself confronted by her husband he plays the role of villainous pirate as if that is who he’s been all along.)

.

He learns to love her, this woman with her mercurial ways and her strong opinions (and even her long silences). She makes a good member of his crew and takes direction (and takes to _giving_ direction) as if she’s lived her life at sea. She craves adventure, with her reckless chances and her thirst for exploring new lands. If she misses her family, she hides it well among the crew, though in private, in the Captain’s Quarters when it’s his back against the wall and her body curled into his, she sometimes whispers the name of her son and his heart squeezes.

(She makes him remember his own mother, make him crave the nearness to her that he used to feel at sea. He tells Milah of her magic one night, when he wakes with a shudder and a shout and her hands cup his face and she makes a soothing _shhhhh_ with her lips pursed.

He tells her about that day, about the honey dripping from his fingers and his hand – sticky – in hers. He tells her about how his father would spend one night at home, sometimes two, before he was away for months at a time. He tells her of his dreams, during the early years of his service in the navy, the ones where he awoke and felt his father’s presence, larger than life even in his absence, by the foot of his bunk.

He tells her things never shared with his brother, things long forgotten.

He never tells her Liam’s name.)

.

Some days he thinks that she loves him, too. She tells him so, at night when he moves in her, when she wraps her legs around him and her hands roam down his back. She tells him when they play at fighting, swords clashing on deck – on the days that he bests her and on the days that they call a draw. She tells him other things on days that she bests him, as she pulls him towards their bed and she pushes him down and rides him with abandon.

(But some days he wonders if they are only playing at love, if he’s even capable of if his heart has rotted in his chest, only beating to sustain him, no longer a thing worth caring for, cherishing. No longer a thing worth saving.

He wonders this until the day that she’s gone and his hand is gone and a glittering, mad, crocodile makes his irises burn red.)

.

(It’s strange to only be so sure of something once it’s gone. And once again he vows that he will make the ocean red with his vengeance.)

.

In Neverland he draws her face, he draws her until he gets her features just right, as the number of his crew dwindles until they are a skeleton group, and he learns how to make his ship sail with minimal effort. It’s in Neverland that he remembers the tale that the old First Mate, long gone, lost to the infernal Echo Caves and Pan’s games, replaced by Smee and his red hat. He remembers the tale of the demi-gods who forsake their paths in life and bore two sons, sons who would live untouched as long as they traveled the oceans of the realm.

Clarity is a fickle creature, he thinks, as it strikes him how much of his life would be explained if only it were that he and Liam were those two boys. It’s impossible, of course, because Liam is dead. (Though technically, his brain whispers to him when he tries to sleep, killed out of their realm, killed by a magical plant that is powered by the infernal island around which he sails aimlessly for days at a time.)

.

He shouts to the ocean with an empty ship and a rum-soaked belly. He shouts to his papa, which he has not done since he was sixteen years old, and he tells him if he _is_ a god, then he can go to the devil because Liam is dead and Milah is dead and he is cursed to roam this land until Pan wills him gone.

(And Pan will never will him gone, not when he can torture an already tortured man.

So when he finally takes the deal, it is because he fears that he will go mad if he stays for one more day. So he swipes a branch of dreamshade and he does what needs to be done and he lands back in his realm, a survivor still.

 

5.

He’s playing at being a blacksmith of unidentified origin and he’s stopped counting his years when he meets her, his time in Neverland the dark monotony of the land making him forget things like birthdays and age and everything except his dreams of puncturing the skin of the crocodile with his hook one final time. (Dreams that become interspersed with dreams of green eyes and pink lips, of her voice, soft and firm, telling him he’s a liar.)

She’s like the sunshine, her bright hair gleaming in the sunlight as the bodies are lifted off his. He raises his hand, shielding himself against the brightness of her as he begins to play them false. There’s a part of him that hates this, her brightness. He hates that his heart skips a beat as she tugs his hair and places a knife to his throat. He hates that his heart skips another beat as she ties him to a tree and – facing off with him, unconcerned about her strange attire – pries the truth from his lips.

(He’s afraid; and it’s not for his miserable life, but for the fact that suddenly he feels less alone, just when he desires to wallow in his misery and his vengeance the most.)

He hasn’t spoken his true name since Baelfire in the early days in Neverland. Since then he’s been Hook to his crew until there was but a few remaining on board – and _pirate_ to the fairy with whom he sometimes kept company.

(So when he discovers, much later, that she shares a son with Bae, he finds himself laughing at the irony. This connection between their families so strong, even in death, even separated by centuries, and the disappearance of Killian Jones is bookended by the parents of a boy who brings them all back together.)

(But she only calls him Hook, and he can never find it in himself to blame her.)

.

It’s easier (and harder) when she leaves him cuffed in the giant’s lair. He’s surrounded by treasure and when he is released, hours later, he finally sees the truth in her words – _I just need a head start and you’re not going to die._ With a back-up plan, he’s less angry with her, even though when he sees her again, walls shielding her eyes and her surety that he would have betrayed her, he feels it surge within him again. Even though he knows that he’ll make his way to their land, he’ll find the crocodile, he allows the anger – and it’s release.

(What he doesn’t expect is the flash of shame he feels at the pain in her eyes when he leaves them in the cell.)

.

Strangely it’s while their swords are clashing next the swirling water of the lake, portal open, that he catches a faint waft of something sweet and floral. And when she jumps through the portal – her heart safely in her chest – unable to be taken by Cora – he remembers the scent and thinks of his mother for the first time in centuries.

The scent lingers with him in Storybrooke, in the land without magic and a reluctant savior leading the charges against him. It’s strong when he’s handcuffed to the hospital bed and she’s leaning over him, her smirk matching his, the rolling of her eyes fading into sadness as she tells him that he’s number one candidate for dead guy of the year.

The scent disappears when he makes his way to Manhattan and his hook presses into the crocodile’s flesh, the poison of the dreamshade seeping into his veins.

. 

It’s not until his vengeance is complete and then taken away from him with a snap of a finger (or, the lighting of a candle as it were) that he realizes that all he’s really been doing is courting death along the way.

(And yet still he survives.)

.

As soon as he becomes aware that it’s missing, he waits and waits for its return, but it remains elusive until he’s standing at the helm of the Jolly Roger, alone, fingers gliding along the smooth skin of the magic bean. And he remembers, in flashes, when Baelfire dropped into the water next to his ship in Neverland. And he thinks about another lost boy, with his father’s eyes, the one that he lost that day.

(And he remembers the way Liam’s arms wrapped around him in that dark, wet alley so long ago, a person once thought lost, now found. And he remembers hoping to never lose that feeling – that safety.)

.

In the end, he cannot condemn the town to destruction and he returns, with the wind at his back, following him to Storybrooke, where he swears he can hear his mother’s laughter whipping through the sails. All the way to her gleaming golden hair and her sad eyes as she tells him that they must go find her son, Baelfire’s son.

(And he finds he wants to be a hero for Emma, in this one task, this one moment. And maybe that will be enough.)

 

6.

He finally recognizes the truth, that he wants to be Killian Jones again when he comes face to face with his father, a monstrous sight, half-man, half-terrors of a childhood nightmare with his water-logged features and his sunken eyes. The conch shell they used to call upon a creature of the sea summoned him and Emma watched him in shock as his eyes widened and he whispers “Papa.”

He’s surrounded by both friend (Emma, only Emma) and foes too numerous as he faces his father. After the shock wears off, he clears his throat and then, “So it’s true, then.”

Emma glances at him, a line forming between her eyes as her brows scrunch together and questions him, “What’s true?”

He shakes his head at her and – even though they’ve only shared one kiss and he’s sliced open his chest and shown her his heart – she clearly understands that there’s no time.

.

Eventually the tale is shared, in bits and pieces to start and then all at once.  

When it rains in Neverland (an all too often occurrence for his preferences) they make camp, making a makeshift tent with leaves plucked from trees and sewn together with needle and thread from the fallen fairy. Sometimes Emma joins him, a questioning in her brow and he tries to brush her away. But his father finds them and tells the first part of the tale.

(It begins with his mother, how she was once the daughter of the sea god who fell in love with a human. She had the gift of immortality – as did he – but they gave it up for a life on land, a life filled with children and family. That is, until the king incited war on the creatures of magic and they were called to serve.)

Killian leaves the dry cover and finds himself under the deluge, and he snarls about how long it takes leather to dry but he still makes his way to the other side of the camp, away from her prying eyes and his father’s tales.

Besides, he already knows how this story ends.

.

As always, it’s Emma who finds him later, rainstorm all washed out, his jacket hanging as the temperature rises and the moisture in the air dries around them.

“So,” she says as she takes a seat next to him and offers a coconut.

He grins at her and pokes a hole with his hook. She smiles back, a mere lift of the right corner of her lip, but he knows that she’s remembering other shared moments and shared coconuts.

“So you have a father,” she continues after a moment of silence.

“Aye. It’s not like a hatched, fully formed pirate.”

She bumps her shoulder to his as she replies with raised eyebrows, “Sarcasm? That’s what you’re going with?”

But she softens it with a follow-up before he can snip back at her, “I meant, since you’ve been around a while, it seems strange to have your father just show up.”

This time he does arch his brow at her and laughs, “None more surprised than myself, love.”

She doesn’t say more; she just sits with him quietly while they wait for the scouting group to make their way back to camp. And it’s nice, he thinks, as the dark sky continues it’s relentless presence, this feeling like she _understands._ (And perhaps she actually does understand the discombobulating sensation that he feels at this intrusion, he thinks later, as he watches her parents make way back to camp and sit beside her.)

.

One day later they find Wendy, and with her, the key to understanding Pan’s goal. Of all the members of the party, it’s his father who surprises him with his anger. Eyes glittering as he tells them that Pan killed his other son, and thus, must pay, and by his own hand. To which the parents of the young lad Henry vehemently disagree.

Killian stands silently, watching the group argue over tactics and rights and who should go on the mission to Skull Rock. He knows his place, though. His place is to follow Emma’s instruction. His place is to do what is told of him. His place is _not_ to interfere.

.

Emma finds him after the plans are all set, sitting next to him, aimlessly poking at their fire. He wants to pull her body into his, to bury his face into the place where her hair currently falls, that curve, where her neck meets her shoulder. But she told him to back off after the fight with Neal, Baelfire, her voice breaking as she shouted that _Henry_ is the only love in her life.

It stung, but he made it work, following her lead, and pretending like he couldn’t remember the feel of her hands gripping his jacket, her lips chasing his, until they stood breath mingling, before she pulled away. He’s good at pretending, has more than a lifetime’s worth of pretending.

But tonight, he doesn’t want that, and in lieu of the truth, he just reiterates, “I’ve yet to see you fail.”

.

(And if, when the mission is a success and his father parts ways with them, sinking back into the water from whence he came, he breathes a sigh of relief without regret or longing.)

.

They return to Storybrooke, increased in numbers and safe, conquering heroes. Later, Emma climbs about his ship late at night and he begins to learn her constellations, their backs on the deck, and his hand in hers. She tells him the stories that she remembers from books growing up as her fingers trace his and they gaze at the shining patterns in the sky.

And even later, he learns her body, as he leads her to his bed, and she teases him with a sparkle in her eyes, until he’s gasping her name.

.

(When it’s dawn and the water quietly slaps against the Jolly Roger, while Emma is curled into his blanket and her breathing is soft and even, he makes his way to the deck and watches the water.

He’s still there when Emma climbs the stairs, still wrapped in a blanket, and stands next to him, her hand covering his on the helm.)


End file.
